Baking our way through the Tartine cookbook!

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Fruit Galette

Posted by bakingtartine on July 27, 2009

Here we go! Today is the first day we baked from the book. Originally we planned on making the Trifle of Summer Fruit but we were invited to dinner with friends who live about 45 minutes away and I didn’t want to keep the dish out of the refrigerator for that long. We had perfect peaches and strawberries from the farmer’s market so we decided to make the galette with them. The recipe yields 2 large or 12 small galettes so we made half a recipe for one large galette. It’s in the oven right now and smells really summertime-y and fruity.

I’ve never made a pastry dough the way the book indicates. You are supposed to use part pastry flour and part all-purpose flour, so Alex went to the store to pick up some pastry flour. He returned with cake flour because that’s what the lady at the store told him to get. According to the book, the dough is “still excellent using only all-purpose flour.” so that’s what we did. I think cake flour is totally different from pastry flour, no? (Further research has led me to believe I would have been just fine to use the cake flour. Next time. The box is still unopened in the pantry.) I dumped all of the flour onto my work surface, which felt illegal or something because I am used to making everything in a bowl. Frozen butter chunks were scattered over the flour and smooshed into long strips with the rolling pin. This is a hot day, being summer in southern California, and the butter softened about as fast as I was able to work. I added salty water from the freezer and, using a large knife since I lack a bench scraper, chopped and scraped the whole thing into a shaggy mass, which was dusted with flour, rolled, folded, repeat, until a smooth dough forms. This really did make a nice, smooth, easy to handle dough. I was surprised that it actually worked. I can’t wait to make it again in cooler weather.

After a rest in the refrigerator it was ready for fruit. The book suggests some re-rolling after the dough chills but we are a little pressed for time today so I rolled it in preparation for the fruit before it chilled. I arranged the sliced strawberries and peaches and sprinkled some sugar over the fruit. The edges of the dough were folded over, brushed with cream and sprinkled with a little more sugar. The book suggests that the cream be combined with egg yolk for an egg wash but I have a strange aversion to eggs so I skipped that part. Eggs in a cake? No problem. Egg just to make it glossy and give the sugar something to adhere to? Maybe next time.

The galette will come out of the oven in 15 minutes. In the meantime, we are watching the MotoGP race. I somehow became addicted to motorcycles around 10 years ago and now Alex is well on his way to becoming addicted as well. It’s the last time they’ll race at Donington Park in England today. Colin Edwards went from 15th to 2nd! I wish his ride received more camera time because that’s a really exciting thing to watch. And now we’re off. More later!

…

Hello, it’s tomorrow and there is only one piece of galette left! It survived the car ride and tasted great. Everyone liked it, including our littlest host, age 4, who told Alex that those were not peaches, in fact, but lemons. I heard that comment before I tasted it so I was initially worried that I hadn’t used enough sugar but I think she said it because the peaches looked yellow. It tasted sweet enough to me! We will definitely make this again. Alex might not even want to make the rest of the recipes anymore after having this galette. It helped to have really nice fruit to use. That meant the entire dessert only had 2 tablespoons of sugar! The only changes I’ll make for next time will be to roll the crust thinner and pile the fruit higher. It was a bit thin and pizza-like and I think I’d have preferred it with a higher fruit to crust ratio. Nevertheless, it was truly delicious and simple to make. A nice choice for the first recipe! Make this soon!